Working Week of NHS Consultant Surgeons Project: SurgiDiary

What is SurgiDiary?

Consultant surgeons across the NHS face increasing pressures: limited theatre access, increased administrative burden, and inadequate training time. The 2025 UK Surgical Workforce Census confirms these pressures are intensifying.

SurgiDiary is an easy-to-use app designed to capture accurate, real-world evidence about how these pressures shape the consultant working week.

Developed in partnership with inQuisit Ltd, and overseen by Associate Professor Deborah Eastwood with input from an advisory panel, specialty associations and GIRFT leads, SurgiDiary turns lived experience into data.

Why SurgiDiary matters

SurgiDiary aims to:

  • Build a true picture of how consultant surgeons spend their time across clinical, administrative, and wider responsibilities.
  • Identify systemic barriers preventing effective operating and training.
  • Strengthen the national evidence base that informs decisions on workforce, theatre investment, and training policy.
  • Provide insights that support consultant job planning and local service improvement.

Get involved

We invite consultant surgeons across the UK to participate in this four-week diary exercise.

Why take part?

  • Track and visualise your working week.
  • Identify discrepancies between job-planned and actual activity.
  • Evidence the real pressures affecting operating and training.
  • Support our national advocacy to improve theatres, staffing and training.

How to take part

  1. Sign up at surgidiary.web.app
  2. Add SurgiDiary to your mobile home screen as an app (follow the steps to add the SurgiDiary app to your home screen).
  3. Accept notifications
  4. Create an account using your email
  5. Complete a handful of questions about your role, contract, and numbers and types of programmed activities (PAs) in your job plan
  6. Log your daily activity for 4 weeks from 2 February to 3 March 2026 (approximately 2 minutes per day).

Outputs

SurgiDiary will generate a national policy report synthesising diary data with UK Surgical Workforce Census evidence, which will be published this year.

What data SurgiDiary captures

1. Registration details: 

  • Email (for verification and support) 
  • Professional role  
  • NHS contract type 
  • Main place of work

2. Activity data:

  • Job-planned PAs
  • Actual clinical and non-clinical activity (e.g. Direct Clinical Care (DCC), Supporting Professional Activities (SPA), additional activity, external duties, leave, university work)

3. Demographic information (optional):

  • Age
  • Marital status
  • Religion
  • Ethnicity

4. Technical data

  • Device type
  • Operating system
  • IP address
  • Usage analytics

All data is securely stored, anonymous, and analysed only in aggregated form.

How your data will be used

  • RCS England receives aggregated, anonymised data only.
  • No identifiable personal data is shared.
  • Findings may be presented regionally where required to avoid identification.
  • Registration details are deleted within 30 days if you close your account.
  • Anonymous submissions may be retained indefinitely for analysis and research.

You have full GDPR rights, including access, deletion, correction and objection to processing.

Contact: help@surgidiary.com.

How to log your activity

1. Click ‘log activity’ button.
2. Select date (entries can be retrospective).
3. Add the start and end time of the activity.
4. Select the type of activity category:

  • DCC
  • SPA
  • Additional responsibilities
  • External duties
  • Additional remunerated work
  • Leave
  • University activity.

5. Select a subcategory.
6. Indicate whether the activity was part of your job plan or an extra activity.
7. Add comments (optional).

How to log extra activity

If an activity falls outside your job plan, you will be asked why:

  • Service pressures
  • Staff shortages
  • Clinical demands
  • Admin demands
  • Catch-up on uncompleted tasks
  • Emergencies
  • Peer pressures
  • Other
  • Prefer not to say.

How to log your weekly reflections

Every Thursday, you will be prompted to:

  • Complete five NHS Staff Survey questions
  • Reflect on your performance
  • Comment on your working environment

This helps contextualise your activity data.

Frequently asked questions

How do I log a multi-disciplinary team meeting?

MDT meetings are found under 'Direct Clinical Care'.

How do I log an extended theatre list, which is more than one PA or two half days?

Extended lists may be logged as extra activity if beyond your job-planned PAs.

How do I record downtime between theatre cases?

Log the main theatre session under Direct Clinical Care > Operating session, and add additional activities (e.g. SPA admin) as needed. You can also leave a comment in the free text box.

How do I record overlapping responsibilities?

Log all activities undertaken, even when timings overlap.

How do I log late-night emails or admin?

Select SPA > General administration, marking as an extra activity if outside planned SPA time.

How do I add the app to my home screen?

iPhone and iPad users

  • Open the Safari browser and navigate to SurgiDiary using the link sent to you. 
  • Tap the Share icon (square with an arrow pointing upward).
  • Scroll down the share menu and select Add to Home Screen.
  • You can edit the name of the app shortcut on the next screen. Tap Add in the top-right corner to finish.
  • Follow any on-screen prompts. When asked, select Allow notifications. If you missed the prompt, go to your phone or iPad's Settings > Notifications > SurgiDiary > Turn on Allow Notifications. Make sure notifications are enabled. 

Android users

  • Open the Chrome browser and navigate to SurgiDiary using the link sent to you. 
  • Tap the three-dot menu icon in the top right corner.
  • Select Add to Home Screen.
  • You can edit the name of the app shortcut on the next screen. Tap Add in the top-right corner to finish. 
  • Follow any on-screen prompts. When prompted, select Allow notifications. If you missed the prompt, go to your phone settings > Notifications > SurgiDiary > Turn on Allow Notifications. Make sure notifications are enabled. 

How can I turn on notifications for the app?

To receive notifications, the app must be added to your phone’s home screen. Notifications will not work if the app is only opened in a browser.

To enable notifications, once the app is installed:

  • Open the app and sign in.
  • Tap the profile icon in the top-right corner of the screen.
  • Locate the Notifications toggle and switch it on. When prompted, allow notifications on your phone.
  • If you do not see a pop-up asking for permission, please check your phone’s notification settings to ensure notifications are enabled for the app.
     

Contact and support

For queries about the project or technical issues: